Jay Mitchell

Jay A. Mitchell (BA ’80) joined Stanford Law School in 2007 to launch and direct the Organizations and Transactions Clinic. The clinic is designed to help prepare students for corporate practice through representation of established nonprofit corporations on governance, structural, contractual, and other matters.

Professor Mitchell’s recent research focuses on the application of information and graphic design principles to legal documents, and on transactional practice and teaching. In 2016, he collaborated with a graphic designer and published Picturing Corporate Practice, a book targeted to students interested in corporate practice and lawyers new to the field. The book features over 50 diagrams, timelines, and other graphics, and encourages the use of visual approaches for dealing with problems, plans, and documents across the practice.

Before joining Stanford Law School, Professor Mitchell served for nearly 15 years as chief corporate counsel and a member of the legal and finance senior management teams at Levi Strauss & Co., where he was responsible for stockholder, finance, governance, disclosure, and commercial transaction matters. Earlier in his career, Mitchell was a partner at Heller Ehrman in San Francisco, an associate at Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C., and law clerk to Judge John Lewis Smith of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.